A third Senate Democrat has announced his intention to vote for Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. "After meeting with Judge Gorsuch, conducting a thorough review of his record, and closely following his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe that he is a qualified jurist who will base his decisions on his understanding of the law and is well-respected among his peers," Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly said in a statement. Donnelly joins Democratic colleagues Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who both pledged last month to vote to confirm Gorsuch,...

TERRE HAUTE, Indiana—On the first Saturday of Donald Trump’s presidency, as protesters and marchers stormed the nation’s capital and cities around the country, Dick and Jane Ames threw a party. Four days earlier, they visited a Party Mania store and purchased two big red balloons, $11 apiece, one in the shape of the number 4 and the other in the shape of a 5. For $50, they purchased a cardboard cutout of the guest of honor. Jane, 74, prepared a tantalizing, if at first blush random, spread of food. She whipped up a tamale casserole, a tossed salad with tomatoes,...

Put this in the category of be careful what you wish for. The instant that Trump won the White House, the chatter about impeaching him has been non-stop. The reasons many legal scholars, ethics experts, and political analysts give boil down to this. He has business dealings with foreign governments, most notably Russia, his family management arrangement still presents business conflicts, his possible violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from buying influence with federal officials or receiving special treatment, and influence peddling and gift taking from foreign governments. These are all sticky points that Trump hasn’t done much...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump and his administration (all times EST): 2:17 p.m. Former Vice President Dan Quayle is among those visiting Trump Tower on Tuesday. Quayle entered the Manhattan high-rise that's home to President-elect Donald Trump accompanied by Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the incoming commander in chief....

Red-state Democrats and party strategists are already nervously looking past 2016, when they are angling to recapture the Senate, to the 2018 elections, hoping against hope that their party isn’t setting itself up for a titanic midterm backlash that could flip control of the Senate for a third time in three elections. As difficult as the 2016 Senate map has been for Republicans, who had to defend numerous blue- and purple-state seats and could lose their majority, Democrats’ 2018 map looks practically unnavigable. The party starts with five ruby-red seats to defend: Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia....

Vigo County is kind of a big deal. The world wants to know what people here think. That’s because, when it comes to picking the leader of the free world, as Vigo County goes so goes the nation. The community is known as “America’s bellwether,” or predictor. The county’s track record explains why. A majority of Vigo County voters have favored the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1888, except two. None of the other 3,141 counties in the U.S. matches Vigo’s accuracy, according to Massachusetts political researcher Dave Leip’s “Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.” In fact, a mere...

Before he was Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) took a politically popular, if legally questionable, stand: There would be no Syrian refugees resettled in his state, not after the attacks in Paris last fall carried out in part by Islamist terrorists who masqueraded as Syrian migrants. On the day before the vice-presidential debate, his biggest moment as Trump's running mate, Pence's stand on Syrian refugees received a likely fatal blow: A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Pence has no legal authority to stop the resettlement of these refugees in Indiana.

INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump’s campaign picked the richest Republican city in Indiana - Carmel -- to open its only field office in the state. But a big splash from opening a headquarters in the Indianapolis suburbs doesn’t mean the campaign is overlooking rural Indiana. It’s set to get a piece of the Trump treatment, too. In a throwback to old-style political campaigns, leaders of the Trumpian movement plan to travel to small towns to woo supporters and shower them with yard signs and other Trump-for-president paraphernalia. They’re calling it the “Early for Trump Tour.” The rural swing will be led...

In his still improbable path to the White House, Donald Trump has an opening, right through the middle of the country. From the Appalachians to the Rockies, much of the American heartland is experiencing a steady decline in its fortunes, with growing fears about its prospects in a Democratic-dominated future. This could prove the road to victory for Trump. The media like to explain Trump’s appeal by focusing on the racial and nationalistic sentiments of his primarily white supporters in places like the Midwest and in small towns. Perhaps more determinative are the mounting economic challenges facing voters in that...

Donald Trump may be a runaway train. He has blasted through his 50 percent “ceiling,” outperforming his polls and winning a clear majority in the last six states to cast ballots. All that success occurred in the Northeast, however, so here’s the question: Is Trump wrapping up this nomination, or is he just really strong in the Northeast? We’ll get some answers in Indiana on Tuesday. It’s a culturally conservative state where many political observers (including yours truly) thought Ted Cruz had a good shot at coalescing the anti-Trump vote. Indiana is also, in terms of demographics, slightly below average...

After the primary in Indiana, only nine states will hold delegate contests of the GOP race. A Republican pollster said, “If the anti-Trump effort in Indiana falls short. It will be increasingly difficult for either Senator Cruz or Governor Kasich to make an argument in upcoming primary contests they can stop Trump”. Read the rest of the post

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As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz battle for first place in Indiana’s heated presidential primary, many don’t realize that the Indiana state legislature has already taken steps to ensure freedom and prosperity for generations to come. Earlier this year, The Hoosier State voted to pass the Convention of States resolution, which calls for an Article V Amendments Convention for the purpose of limiting the size, scope, and jurisdiction of the federal government. Presidential contenders can talk about shrinking government and eliminating the debt, but only a Convention of States can actually reverse 100 years of activist Supreme Court decisions and...

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s no fluke that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stopped by Lucchese’s Italian restaurant outside Elkhart on a barnstorming tour of Indiana this past week. The family-owned eatery is a local landmark. Located on a busy county road, it was started more than 30 years ago by a firefighter who'd learned how to cook for his firehouse crew. It's now managed by his son, a Republican county commissioner, and frequented by conservative GOP Congresswoman Jackie Walorksi when she’s in town. Owner Frank Lucchese confessed to being a John Kasich fan in the presidential primary race, but he understood why...

In Indiana’s competitive 9th Congressional District Republican primary race, there’s a big spender. A really big spender. His name is Joseph A. “Trey” Hollingsworth III (Roll Call has already delved into other oddities about his candidacy , like how he’s from Tennessee), and he’s been blanketing the airwaves with campaign ads in the five-way race for GOP Rep. Todd Young’s open seat — which is rated Safe Republican by the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report/Roll Call. There are unique challenges in the contest, like how no one in his adopted hometown of Jeffersonville has really seen him outside of their...

If you donÂ’t know by now why Indiana is important, you must have missed this post and a good 8,000 similar explainers elsewhere in political media. Long story short, IndianaÂ’s one of the few states left on the map where either Cruz or Trump might plausibly do well. With 57 delegates at stake, a win or loss for Trump there could be the difference between him reaching 1,237 delegates on the first ballot and falling a few dozen short. ItÂ’s essentially a must-win for Cruz to force a contested convention. But heÂ’s not winning, at least according to three private...

Ted Cruz’s team knew that Donald Trump would run away with his native New York Tuesday. And they expect he’ll win the lion’s share of delegates at stake next week when a slate of northeastern states votes. So they’ve spent the last two weeks looking ahead, quietly laying the groundwork for a kitchen-sink campaign in a state they can’t afford to let Trump win: Indiana. The Hoosier State doesn’t vote until May 3, and Cruz certainly isn’t ignoring the contests in between. He spent time this week in both Maryland and Pennsylvania, the two states his campaign is confident will...

Most of the focus for the presidential primaries in both parties goes to New York, the next event on the schedule and the second-largest basket of delegates in the sweepstakes. On the GOP side, the polling shows a lopsided contest, with Donald Trump trouncing Ted Cruz and gaining a majority in every survey since the beginning of March. The leftover attention after New York generally falls to California, the biggest prize, and Pennsylvania, where most delegates will be unbound at the convention anyway. Hardly anyone has paid attention to Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3rd and has 57...

Businessman Donald Trump is still the front-runner, both nationally and in Indiana. But Republican insiders across the state said in interviews Wednesday that the momentum there is now with Cruz, a shift that predated his resounding defeat of Trump in Wisconsin. The timing is crucial. Early voting started Tuesday; absentee ballots hit mailboxes in late March. The Cruz campaign deployed the Texas senator's father, Pastor Rafael Cruz, to Indiana for the week to woo voters, and is transferring its Wisconsin team there to begin field operations. As Cruz was enjoying his big victory Tuesday evening, his father was addressing a...